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Marie Curie/Transcript
Transcript Text reads: The Mysteries of Life with Tim and Moby Tim and Moby view Tim's x-ray. TIM: That's where my arm got broken last year. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Oh, stop apologizing. I know it was an accident. Tim reads from a typed letter. TIM: Dear Tim and Moby, Who invented radioactivity? From, the Sufficer. Well, actually, nobody invented radioactivity. It's a natural property of certain elements. An image shows the Periodic Table of Elements. The radioactive elements are highlighted. TIM: But the word radioactivity was invented by one of its early researchers, Madame Marie Curie. An image shows Marie Curie. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Radioactivity is when atoms shoot out high-energy particles or waves. An animation shows radioactive atoms giving off waves. TIM: It happens when the nucleus of the atom partially disintegrates, or falls apart. As the atom decays, the number of protons and neutrons in its nucleus change! In other words, it turns into a completely different atom, with different properties! Images and animations show how a green substance turns gray when the number of protons and neutrons changes in its nucleus. TIM: In the late 19th century, scientists knew that certain substances gave off mysterious rays. Marie Curie was the first to propose that radioactivity is caused by something happening inside the atoms of radioactive elements. An animation shows a light bulb going off in Marie Curie’s head as she realizes that radioactivity begins inside atoms. TIM: She was born Maria Sklodowska in Warsaw, Poland in 1867. A map of Europe shows Warsaw, Poland. TIM: Maria was interested in science from a very early age. An animation shows a young Maria looking through a magnifying glass. TIM: But because she was a woman, and because she was Polish, she could not get admitted to any university. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Well, Poland was part of the Russian empire at the time, and there was a lot of prejudice against Poles. A map shows Warsaw as part of Russia. TIM: So Maria traveled to Paris to study physics at the prestigious Sorbonne University, eventually becoming the first female professor there. An animation shows Maria in front of the Sorbonne University. TIM: She changed her name to the more French-sounding Marie, and married Pierre Curie, a physics professor at the Sorbonne. An animation shows Marie and Pierre Curie. TIM: In 1896, the Curies began to experiment with uranium, which was known to emit a mysterious sort of energy. An animation shows Marie and Pierre in a lab, wearing safety goggles and lab coats. Marie holds a flask filled with an orange liquid. TIM: Marie made a few important discoveries. First, she figured out that minerals with a high amount of uranium in them emitted more intense rays than minerals with a small amount of uranium. An animation shows two minerals. There is a stronger glow around a green mineral containing more uranium than a yellow mineral. TIM: Marie began to think that uranium atoms might be changing on the inside. This was unheard of at the time. Most scientists thought that atoms were unchanging objects from the beginning of time. When Marie saw that the element thorium gave off a similar energy to uranium, she named the property of energy emission radioactivity, a term based on the Latin word for ray. An image shows Curie observing the energy in thorium. Her speech bubble reads, Radioactivity. MOBY: Beep. TIM: No, you can't just go and buy uranium. The Curies extracted it from a mineral called pitchblende. Which brings us to another of Marie's discoveries. She found that the pitchblende gave off more radiation than the uranium she extracted from it. An image shows pitchblende giving off more radiation than uranium. TIM: She suspected that there were other elements in pitchblende that were even more radioactive than uranium. With Pierre's help, she refined the pitchblende to figure out the source of the mysterious radiation, and came across two new elements. She named them polonium, after her home country of Poland, and radium, after the element's radioactive properties. An image shows the Periodic Table of Elements. Polonium and Radium pop out of the chart. MOBY: Beep. TIM: Yeah, in 1903, the Curies and Henri Becquerel, the original discover of radioactivity, shared the Nobel Prize in Physics. An image shows the Curies and Becquerel wearing their gold medals. TIM: And Marie won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1911 for her discovery of polonium and radium. The discovery of radioactivity was immediately recognized as useful to science and technology. It led to everything from medical x-rays to time-measuring techniques, to glow-in-the-dark watches, to nuclear power! Images illustrate the uses of radioactivity as Tim describes. TIM: But people didn't realize early on how deadly radiation could be. MOBY: Beep. Moby looks at Tim's x-ray. TIM: Yeah, in 1934, Marie Curie died of a blood disease that can be caused by radiation poisoning. MOBY: Beep. Moby looks concerned. TIM: No, no. I don't think I'm going to get sick from one x-ray. You worry too much. Category:BrainPOP Transcripts